Screw It, I'm Going Out to Find It!

Chapter XIV: The Super Franky Building Co!

The warehouse was not oversized. It was gigantic to be sure, but each and every place Jaune looked was filled with workers running around projects. On each of them was a weird looking uniform: a sleek, black, egg-shaped set of overalls paired with purple gloves and goggles. Dancing around the room, sparks flew choreographed with the slower movement of larger parts. While he looked over the various works, a single thought entered Jaune's head: they all look like boats.

Before long, Franky led them into a room near one of the distant corners. Walls were lined with shelves, metal frames with boards layered within. They were littered with scattered papers and wells of ink; half the wells held an ink pen sticking out. In the center of the room was a desk — or, it was something Jaune could only assume was a desk. It was more alike to a small, box-like rowboat with a board on top than it was any form of furniture. To add to the sight, on the far corner of its surface was a lamp; the body was formed by a boat-esque structure and the shade by coiled sails.

"I'd tell you all to have a seat, but I don't really have the space." Franky gestured across his desk showing that there were only two seats. Before Jaune could properly protest, his crew had decided that it was necessary for the captain to sit. The other seat was taken by Neo who had no desire to stand for too long.

Franky pulled the plans back out and started scrawling some sort of list onto a blank parchment. There was something that could be said about the sight of a punk like man carefully writing with an ink pen.

"I'm not complaining," Jaune tested the waters. "But are you really going to do this for free?" Seemingly amused by his nervousness, Franky smirked a bit while he flipped the first page over.

Another page was flipped before he answered. "If I'm honest with you, I've been trying to find my thing for a while. See, a few islands over is a company named Galley-La; they're known as the best shipwrights on the Grand Line. As for me, if it wasn't obvious, that's what I've always grown up building: ships." He paused, shooting Jaune a knowing look. "Like you, I also don't want to draw too much attention to myself. So, in order for me to be in that business either Galley-La steals all the customers, or I put myself in the limelight by competing with them. It's lose-lose."

Mutual destruction, then. They didn't want the marines after them, and evidently Franky didn't either. "We'll keep quiet if you do too," Jaune offered.

"Yeah, yeah. I thought that was a given." Franky shrugged his shoulders. Briefly, Jaune wondered how the thin, by comparison, biceps could so easily move those massive fore-arms. "The point is, I've been struggling to give up being a shipwright; damn near everything I build ends up a boat. Now this? This is exciting and it gives me something to try. Normally, I'd have to pay to get prints like these. We'll cover the materials necessary. There's this scrapyard over on the coast kept out of view of the train station. While it's mostly junk, the Super Franky Building Co is pretty damn good at recycling. The only thing I have to really ask is if you have any land we can build this on?"

A silent conversation passed between them. Neo, being native to the tongue, was the most verbose. Seeing their answer already, Franky waved his hand. "I have someone I can talk to about it. I'll contact you if anything goes wrong; here."

Franky reached under the desk and produced a transponder snail for them. As they left the warehouse, they were glad that their scrolls would be working soon. The snail was not very appreciated.

"I guess we'll spend our time around here," Jaune mentioned as they headed back to the train station. "Being on land will give me some actual time to get used to my devil fruit."

"Not to mention we don't want to leave the islands behind yet," Blake agreed. "I don't know how possible it would be to get back here."

"We'll head to The Bucket and wait for Franky to contact us," decided Jaune. With no more objections, they continued on.